Light scattering by dust particles in the solar system with
assessments of both direct and inverse problems
K. Lumme
- Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 64, FI-00014 Finland.
We analyze both the intensity and linear polarization of cosmic dust particles by using the physically exact fixed cluster T-matrix method for aggregates of spheres and DDA for aggregates of Gaussian random spheres. We study both the spherical geometry (in cometary comae) and cylindrical slabs (for regoliths) up to 1024 monomers with size parameters less than ∼3. It is straightforward to produce the observed linear polarization in both geometries while the typically convex opposition spike seems to require the regolith geometry.